i bet there is a lot of soy in the water ;'D
U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report
211–220 of 413 posts
Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report
#212A reminder that you can remove these and many other contaminants from your water with a simple undersink RO filter. They are quite inexpensive and start at about $160 on Amazon for a lifetime of clean drinking and cooking water. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/list-of-household-filters-appr...
I've heard this also removes many essential minerals that we get from water?
Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which ones? (Genuinely interested, not being snarky)
I am betting Accujack was referring to boomers. And in particular, those of the conservative persuasion. I could be wrong, though.
I think Arethuza might have been asking which democracies have survived the self interest that was being discussed? (I assume s/he is looking for democracies that didn't end in chopped heads.)
Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report
#214Meanwhile, these same PFAS chemicals are sprayed liberally onto the surface of clothing that we all wear, and increasingly furniture as well, and this may account for far more human PFAS consumption than drinking water.
PFAS chemicals are widely used for waterproofing fabrics. The industry term is DWR -- Durable Water Repellent. The chemicals are sprayed onto the surface and simply left there to rub off on your hands and face every time you touch them. The chemicals are ubiquitous; nearly every garment marketed as "water resistant" will be covered with them. As of 2019, only one large outdoor clothing company has abandoned PFC-based DWR finishes. I've also noticed more and more furniture advertised with DWR recently.
All of this concern over parts-per-trillion levels in drinking water is like panicking over an untended candle when your house is already on fire.
EDIT:
Also note that the U.S. military regularly dumps tremendous quantities of PFAS chemicals on the ground around dozens of military bases around the country [1]. They use it in fire suppression foam, of which they spray thousands of gallons during regular fire fighting exercises.
There are low-cost and low-toxicity alternatives to PFAS that are fairly well proven to be just as effective in fire suppression foams, but the U.S. military continues to ignore them steadfastly.
1 - https://theintercept.com/2018/02/10/firefighting-foam-afff-p...
EDIT 2:
Don't forget carpeting! For decades, rugs and carpeting advertised as "stain repellent" have been coated with PFCs. One prominent brand is 3M's Scotchgard, which is also sold as a liquid for people to spray on all their shit. Until 2003, liquid Scotchgard contained PFOS, a C8-class PFC that is now banned. Even today, Scotchgard and other similar products still contain PFCs -- merely shorter-chain versions that have been surmised (but not proven) to be safer.
Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Democracy is mostly a facade anymore, unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, we haven't gone completely south to a dictatorship--there are many protections in place to keep things from falling apart but nonetheless I feel as though we're in the decline in the respect of being democratic. The underlying failed assumption in our representative democracy was that representatives would represent their constituents' interests…
Democracy is more alive today than it ever has been in history. What you are seeing is democracy. I think in the west we've been taught that 'democracy' is by definition good, and therefore anything bad is 'not democracy'. But the reality is that people are voting for this.
Well, no, actually, people aren't voting for this.
Many people aren't voting at all, because they're excluded based on felony convictions, inability to meet paperwork requirements for voter IDs, etc.
Gerrymandering is extremely effective. The electoral college isn't intentional gerrymandering, but it has the same effect as gerrymandering: two of the last three presidents lost the popular vote. And where it's intentional, it's even more effective. In North Carolina, Republicans won 77% of congressional seats with just over 50% of the popular vote in 2018. In Ohio, Republicans won 75% of congressional seats with 52% of the popular vote in 2018.
In most areas, single vote per election systems prevent third parties from being viable. There's some evidence this encourages extremism as well: moderates aren't able to sufficiently differentiate themselves, causing vote splitting.
And after all that, if they're still not able to win unfairly, electioneers can just go into the electronic voting machine and change the votes.
And even if you manage to get the person the majority wanted to be in office into office, there's no guarantee that they'll do what they said they'd do that caused people to vote for them. I know lots of people (myself included) who view being forced to buy health insurance or pay a fine as a major betrayal by Obama.
Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report
#216Can anyone help me understand how anything at a concentration of I'm not arguing, just trying to get my head around it. (And yes I realize that in some of these areas the concentrations were orders of magnitude higher; the recommendation for allowable concentration is < 1PPT according to the article)
It doesn't degrade and accumulates in the body (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid#Human_d...), where it looks like it acts like a "biological handgrenade" (a nifty term I heard elsewhere).
"PFOA is not rapidly eliminated from the human body, with a half-life of 3.8 years in human blood, thus raising the public concerns over the toxicological implications due to internal exposure." (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4817033/)
That's elimination from retired "fluorochemical production workers" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17805419/).
Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report
#217Not to ignore the democracy problem but solely on the localized health issue, if you can afford a Berkey Water Filter, get one.
I love my off-brand filter I bought from St. Paul Mercantile.
I don't see the need to pay for a brand and logo on the filter.
Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're forgetting the #1 cheapest and most effective way to reduce our environmental impact: efficiency of energy use and efficiency of resource use. In the case of GDP, energy and resources are both costs that businesses try to minimize in order to provide end products and services, which is what the GDP measures. Therefore, the carbon intensity of a dollar of GDP is expected to decrease in time, as people discover…
>You're forgetting the #1 cheapest and most effective way to reduce our environmental impact: efficiency of energy use and efficiency of resource use. How can that be cheaper and more effective than reducing consumption? >If we were to directly price in the costs of CO2 via a tax, the fall would be far faster. And as we come up with tech that doesn't emit, and is cheaper than fossil fuel extraction, we will stop usin…
After reading your last paragraph, I'm convinced that we are in full agreement, except for nomenclature choices.
Efficiency is just that, consuming less. One can also consume less end services, too. But if you're saying that a carbon tax is infeasible, then far more in feasible is just taking away with no replacement.
I am 100% in agreement with your plans to educate people to consume less, and have gotten active in local politics to try to effect the changes you suggest. These are exactly the types of things that we need to be doing! I don't think they will decrease GDP, and will likely increase it, as well as increase the quality of life of those who choose to live closer to more people with more transit and amenities nearby. Walking to a small grocery store that takes up 1/8th or less of a super market, and doing that daily or every other day to get the freshest food, is something that will make tons of people far more happy and likely reduce food waste, etc. but I think this will likely increase GDP.
Locally, the biggest pushback is from those who oppose allowing dense walkable neighborhoods. They tend to oppose "growth," be it economic, or population, or incomes, or basically any change from their car-centric lives, and walkable neighborhoods and the construction that comes with buildings taller than 2 stories are the prime culprit, or so they say. They control the local Sierra Club chapter, even. So we get to hear about the "dangers" of 5G tech rather than concrete proposals to stop climate change through local political change. Sigh.
Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report
#219It is constantly amazing to me that "cover up the existence of poisonous chemicals in your drinking water" is a viable position for a democratically-elected officeholder to have. What a world we live in.
Democracy is mostly a facade anymore, unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, we haven't gone completely south to a dictatorship--there are many protections in place to keep things from falling apart but nonetheless I feel as though we're in the decline in the respect of being democratic. The underlying failed assumption in our representative democracy was that representatives would represent their constituents' interests…
As I keep saying, we're using 18th century social technology to solve 21st century problems. Thus we are treated to spectacles like the Chief Justice of the United States reminding everyone that that the US Senate is 'the world's greatest deliberative body' literally at the midnight hour following a day of blatant partisan hackery punctuated with ceremonial roll calls, whose outcome is well known in advance and whose architects make sarcastic comments on their role in the process.
For the first time in history, we have technology that would allow every resident of the US to both receive transmit information more or less instantaneously; such delays as exist are not between our ears, nor do we lack for access to long-term knowledge or choices for how to share it. Vast libraries of knowledge fit in a pocket and participation in national conversations is not merely possible but expected; our every impulse and idea is recorded weighted, traded, and incorporated into a cathedral of civic participation.
At the center of this wondrous contrivance the national rituals are conducted, like psychic engines of historical propulsion whose operation is sacrosanct even as it propels us toward another iceberg, and woe to those who interrupt the comforting rhythms with anxious facts.
Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report
#220Meanwhile, these same PFAS chemicals are sprayed liberally onto the surface of clothing that we all wear, and increasingly furniture as well, and this may account for far more human PFAS consumption than drinking water. PFAS chemicals are widely used for waterproofing fabrics. The industry term is DWR -- Durable Water Repellent. The chemicals are sprayed onto the surface and simply left there to rub off on your hands…
It's even in those "compostable" curiously-grease-proof bowls you see at Qdoba, Chipotle, etc.
https://grist.org/article/chipotle-sweetgreen-bowl-compost-p...